1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to conference call sessions, and more particularly to migration from a source conference call session to a target conference call session.
2. Introduction
A conference call originally was an optional feature of a telephone system. The telephone conference call permitted multiple participants to join a single telephone conference. More recently conference call sessions have included combinations of various kinds of media such as audio, video, text, and computer graphics.
Presently there are numerous and diverse computer application programs for scheduling a conference call session, reminding participants of an upcoming conference call session, controlling access of participants to the conference call session, and adding or removing various media streams to the conference call session. The computer application programs range from rather simple client conferencing programs residing on a participant's smart phone or portable computer, to rather complex programs residing on a server at an Internet site of a conference call service provider. The Internet enabled conference call services include the IBM Corporation LOTUSLIVE ENGAGE online collaboration service, the Citrix Systems Inc. GOTOMEETING online collaboration service, the Google Inc GOOGLE WAVE online collaboration service, and the Cisco Systems, Inc. WEBEX online collaboration service.
The proliferation of conference call services with diverse features and levels of complexity has raised challenges of inter-operability among devices and confusion among the human participants. One attempt to address this problem is the promulgation of industry standards governing conference call features and service protocols, with the hope that conference service providers will offer a variety of standard features to suit the needs of most participants. For example, an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) set of specifications for centralized conference control (XCON) define protocols for manipulation of conference objects, supporting features including floor control, security, user preferences, and media controls. Several open source implementations have been reported including the CONFerencing IMS-enabled Architecture for Next-generation Communication Experience (CONFIANCE), an implementation for an Instant Messaging Service (IMS).
In reality, in the middle of a current conference call session, the participants often find that the capabilities of the current conference call service are so limited that one or more of the participants will manually configure and initiate a new conference call session using a different conference call service. In most cases, the different conference call services use separate signaling and control protocols for controlling the media, so that the new conference call session derives no benefit from the current conference call session. Consequently, the current conference call session is interrupted by the participants spending considerable time and effort in manually configuring and initiating the new conference call session.